Police returns 400 metre from shore after spoting Andaman tribe armed with bows and arrows

Indian officers h a long-distance face-off with tribe in ir latest bid to locate body of 27-year-old John Allen Chau on  remote island of Andaman and Nicobar, police said on Sunday.

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police team, who took a boat just off Indian-owned rth Sentinel island on Saturday, spotted men from Sentinelese tribe on beach where John Allen Chau was last seen, region's police chief Dependra Pathak said.

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Using biculars, officers -- in a police boat about 400 metres from shore -- saw men armed with bows and arrows, weapons reportedly used by isolated tribe to kill Chau as he shouted Christian phrases at m.

"y stared at us and we were looking at m," said Pathak. boat withdrew to avoid any chance of a confrontation.

Police are taking painstaking efforts to avoid any disruption to Sentinelese -- a pre-neolithic tribe whose island is off-limits to outsiders -- as y seek Chau's body.

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death of 27-year-old on vember 17 has cast a new spotlight on efforts to protect one of world's last "uncontacted" tribes whose langu and customs remain a mystery to outsiders.

Fishermen who took Chau to rth Sentinel -- which is one of Andaman and Nicobar islands in Bay of Bengal -- said y saw tribe burying body on beach.

Sentinelese rmally attack anyone who goes to island and Pathak said police are monitoring to see if re is a repeat of an incident after two fishermen who strayed onto island were killed in 2006. One week after ir deaths, bodies of two Indians were hooked on bamboo stakes facing out to sea.

"It was a kind of scarecrow," Pathak said.

"We are studying 2006 case. We are asking anthropologists what y do when y kill an outsider," police chief ded. "We are trying to understand group psychology."

(With inputs from ncies)